There is a demand for energy-autonomous ‘smart’ sensors and integrated circuits utilizing energy harvesting schemes. Prominent examples include sensor network nodes, biomedical implants and wearable devices, and burst-mode wireless transceivers. Recent advances in nanoelectronics allow monolithic integration of ‘smart’ sensors with self-contained sensing, computation, communication and power source to obtain reasonably small sensors. Many sensor applications will require total power as low as 100 μW when using advanced low-power circuits.
The voltage output of a stand-one silicon-based solar cell is typically not sufficient to drive a high-performance transistor. As a result, the transistor will operate near or at the sub-threshold regime. Large area CMOS diodes can be used as photovoltaic components for harnessing fringe light and powering a chip, but such diodes inhibit the use of advanced CMOS technology.